An occasional report from Squaresville, the home of Wayno's cartoons, fine art, illustration and writing

Friday, January 31, 2014

Hero Sandwich

Today's Bizarro comic is my 150th published collaboration with my good friend and colleague, Dan Piraro.

The gag imagines costumed heroes taking on the dietary characteristics of their namesakes, something I've used as inspiration in the past.The submission sketch is cropped in closer, with less background detail, but overall the final art is very similar.

Did I mention that this is our 150th joint effort? It's hard for me to believe we've crafted that many gags together, until I stop to think that Dan does 365 cartoons every year, and has been doing it since 1986. He's produced something in the neighborhood of 10,000 installments of Bizarro, so a mere 150 doesn't sound very significant.To see if I'm showing any improvement, here's my first published Bizarro gag, which ran in April of 2009.

Working with a masterful cartoonist like Dan is rewarding in many ways, and after five years, it's still every bit as thrilling to see a new gag make it to print. With every comic we co-create, I learn something about cartooning. For instance, last week I learned that I will never write a gag that features a bouquet of foil balloons, unless some other poor sap is coloring it. (You'll see what I mean in a couple of weeks.)If you've got time to kill, and plenty of it, please feel free to browse our earlier joint efforts, in this blog's Bizarro Time Capsule.